Why Bloggers Don’t Care About The Russian/Georgian Conflict

There are a lot of reasons most tech/web 2.0 bloggers don’t cover international crisis. Many of them are to buried in there own startups to notice a conflict half way across the globe.

Secondarily it doesn’t have much influence on things that are far more important here at home. Like the price of oil at the pump, the mortgage crisis, or a new iP…

Yep it is an illegal crisis. But when its far easier to sit back and enjoy the Olympics and blog about that. Why in the world would bloggers care to shed some outcry over a bully invading another country illegally, even if they were provoked.

Thirdly, The US will never get into a massive conflict with Russia especially when Russia clearly wants Georgian Petrol Access I mean seriously what Russia is doing merely parallels what we did in Iraq. So it is kind of hypocritical for the US to criticize Russia when we still have a bundle of peace loving troops on the ground in someone else´s backyard.

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Huh? Maybe web 2.0 bloggers don’t care, but there were a lot of bloggers talking about it (a simple Google blog search would have revealed that).

I was even getting messages in social networks about this from people concerned that this was going to erupt into WW3 (which I doubted, as neither Russia or the US want a conflict with each other).

Speaking of Georgia, I was rather surprised by both sides. The Russian planes were unable to hit any pipelines within the first few days (despite many attempts) which pretty much sums up how well trained their pilots are.

As for Georgia, I was surprised they thought they could take on a larger force by themselves.

Either way, this is not making Russia look good, and I would not be too surprised to see Ukraine, Georgia, etc. enter NATO because of this conflict.

There is no parallel between the Russian intervention in South Ossetia (the breakaway region of Georgia) and the U.S. Invasion of Iraq.

The war was started by Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in an effort to crush the separatist movement there. Most of the 2,000 civilian casualties were the result of the Georgian bombardment and occupation of the South Ossetia capital.

Russian troops intervened only in South Ossetia and did not enter Georgia itself. Once the Georgian attacks on South Ossetia ceased, Russian military action against Georgia ceased. Georgia itself was not occupied, and its president remains in power.

A much better analogy is the NATO defense of Kosovo. We have exactly the same scenario: a breakaway province with a different cultural and linguistic group being threatened with ethnic cleansing by the larger nation to which it formerly belonged.

There is nothing a typical blogger can do about this situation. How many bloggers have blogged extensively about Darfur? Has that done any good? Has the U.S. refused even one barrel of oil from the Sudan? Will BP halt oil imports in solidarity with Georgians? Would it have in solidarity with South Ossetians?

When the dust settles, South Ossetia and Abkhazia and perhaps all of Georgia may be part of Russia again, if not outright annexed, then satellite states. Yeah, I’m sure that’s what the separatists want.

Hey David,
What worries me most is that Russia did a DOS on the Georgian gov’t website and anything else that could spread info about the conflict.
Sure, the Olympics are nice, but when one Gov’t can deny access to the web, especially for another Gov’t, what happens to free speach for the rest of us?
Just sayin’

“what Russia is doing merely parallels what we did in Iraq” That has to be one of the most absurd things I have heard, How many UN Security Council Resolutions has Georgia violated (Saddam violated over 15)? Answer: None! How many other nations has Georgia tried to conquer (Saddam tried to conquer 2, Iran and Kuwait)? Answer: None! Does Georgia send money (as Saddam did) to families of suicide bombers? Answer: No! Has Georgia ever been in posession of WMD or used WMD on his own citizens (as Saddam did)? Answer: No!

Trying to say that Georgia is anything close to a threat to the world or Russia as Saddam was to us and the world (even President Clinton and his Secretary of State said that Saddam was the greatest threat that we faced! and that was before 9/11) is patently absurd.